Frank Lloyd Wright built Taliesin West in 1938 as a living laboratory for architectural study, a utopian community in Scottsdale, Ariz., where students could learn the Wrightian way of organic architecture.

Now, however, the future of Taliesin West and Wright's legacy have been thrown into doubt as competing factions struggle for control of the institution.

Over the last year, financial problems and staff upheaval have roiled the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, which controls Taliesin West, resulting in the departure of the organization's chief executive, the dean of its architecture school and 10 of its 13 faculty members. The number of students has fallen to 11 from a high of 35 in the early '80s, and the architecture program is in danger of losing its accreditation.

Behind the scenes at Taliesin West, a complex of low-slung buildings made of rock and glass in the Sonoran Desert, is a dispute between an old guard of Wright disciples (known as fellows) who want to maintain the architect's principles, and those who believe it is time to modernize the school's curriculum and the way the institution is organized and run.

"Frank Lloyd Wright left a legacy," said Vernon Swaback, a local architect and former apprentice who became acting chief executive and chairman last fall and is trying to lead Taliesin West out of the crisis. "His followers are either going to wallow in it, minimize it, trivialize it and become irrelevant, which is about where it is, or they're going to say, 'We're not Frank Lloyd Wright, so what can we do with this?' "

On the traditionalist side are the 28 members of the Senior Taliesin Fellowship, a group comprising many of Wright's original students, who helped create Taliesin West and live on the grounds in small houses they built themselves in the Wrightian style. They endorse Wright's concept of noncompetitive "learning by doing," which means students do not get grades or attend "classes," per se.

Those who favor reform say the institution is out of step with how architecture is taught today at universities – in classrooms and without a particular architectural worldview – compared with Taliesin's apprenticeship method steeped in the beliefs of Wright, who died in 1959.

Furthermore, these people argue, Taliesin West should be run like a professional cultural institution to take advantage of its role as a tourist attraction that last year drew 150,000 visitors.

So far, attempts to resolve the crisis have faltered. An interim governing body that took over last fall to run the foundation, the body that controls and runs both Taliesin West and Wright's other Taliesin campus in Spring Green, Wis., says it has been unable to hire a new chief executive or dean because there is no vision for the future.

Trouble had been brewing for some time at Taliesin West. But tensions came to a head after James Goulka, a former banker, was named chief executive of the foundation by the board in 2002. Goulka tried to shore up the institution's shaky finances and supported an effort by John Wyatt, the school's dean, to revise the academic program.

Angered by these moves, the board voted in April 2004 to oust Goulka. Shortly afterward, Wyatt and the 10 faculty members resigned in protest.

Academic recognition came only in 1987, when the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture received accreditation from the Higher Learning Commission, a regional organization. In 1997, the National Architectural Accrediting Board also approved accreditation, enabling the school to bestow architectural degrees upon its graduates.

Recently, the Higher Learning Commission said in a statement that in spite of Taliesin's "rich tradition and undeniable potential," it faces serious challenges and might lose its accreditation if changes aren't made by November 2006. Separately, the National Architectural Accrediting Board said it will decide Taliesin's status in July. Neither group would provide details.